If you are experiencing a problem with system initialization due to Dracut, please see the common bugs document before filing a bug. Some easy configuration tweaks that fix a wide range of issues may be listed there. If the problem you are seeing is not listed there or none of the workarounds seem to help, please consider filing a bug to help us make Fedora run better on your hardware.

Be prepared to include some information (logs) about your system as well. These should be complete (no snippets please), not in an archive, uncompressed, with MIME type set as text/plain.

Software RAID related problems

If using software RAID disk partitions, please include the output of /proc/mdstat

Network root device related problems

This section details information to include when experiencing problems on a system whose root device is located on a network attached volume (e.g. iSCSI, NFS or NBD). As well as the information from the 'all bug reports' section, include the following information:

Please include the output of ip addr show

Debugging dracut

Configure a serial console

Successfully debugging dracut will require some form of console logging during the system boot. This section documents configuring a serial console connection to record boot messages.

First, enable serial console output for both the kernel and the bootloader.

Open the file /etc/grub.conf for editing. Below the line timeout=5, add the following:

serial --unit=0 --speed=9600

terminal --timeout=5 serial console

Also in /etc/grub.conf, add the following boot arguemnts to the kernel line:

console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600

When finished, the /etc/grub.conf file should look similar to the example below.

Accessing the root volume from the dracut shell

From the dracut debug shell, you can manually perform the task of locating and preparing your root volume for boot. The required steps will depend on how your root volume is configured. Common scenarios include:

The exact method for locating and preparing will vary. However, to continue with a successful boot, the objective is to locate your root volume and create a symlink /dev/root which points to the file system. For example, the following example demonstrates accessing and booting a root volume that is an encrypted LVM Logical volume.

Inspect your partitions using parted

parted /dev/sda -s p

Model: ATA HTS541060G9AT00 (scsi)

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags

1 32.3kB 10.8GB 107MB primary ext4 boot

2 10.8GB 55.6GB 44.7GB logical lvm

You recall that your root volume was a LVM logical volume. Scan and activate any logical volumes

From the output above, you recall that your root volume exists on an encrypted block device. Following the guidance disk encryption guidance from the Fedora 28 Installation Guide, you unlock your encrypted root volume.

UUID=$(cryptsetup luksUUID /dev/mapper/linux-root)

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/mapper/linux-root luks-$UUID

Enter passphrase for /dev/mapper/linux-root:

Key slot 0 unlocked.

Next, make a symbolic link to the unlocked root volume

ln -s /dev/mapper/luks-$UUID /dev/root

With the root volume available, you may continue booting the system by exiting the dracut shell

exit

Additional dracut boot parameters

The following boot parameters are also available to further assist with debugging boot issues.